DREAMS OF A LITTLE GIRL IN A RED
SCARF
There are six of us and a small dog all made from snow by a winter hiker.
We are on a hill by the water, overlooking the blue lake too deep to freeze. We
watch clouds and sailboats with yellow and green spinnakers running before the
wind.
Winter melts. Under radiant sun and crystal sky, the March snow is nearly
gone. Snow rearranges itself and becomes frozen brooks which flow into the lake.
Time does not exist.
We are not quite gone. The dog begins to melt first. It is small but still
recognizable. We’re changing. Slowly we become the moisture in the sky, taken
back to where we began. We’ll continue to live as dreams until winter comes
again.
A little girl wearing a red scarf skips by. Oh look at the little dog made of
snow, she thinks and she pats the top of the dog’s head. Tonight she’ll dream of
the snow dog. It will come to life for her as they play together. And the little snow
dog will dream of the girl.
Tomorrow the girl will return to the hill overlooking the lake, and the dog
will seem to be gone. But the dog isn’t really gone but continues to exist
somewhere in the girl’s mind. The girl knows deep inside of her that she and the
little snow dog will meet again next winter. And until they meet again, the dog
will remember the girl in the red scarf.
Before she leaves the hill, the girl removes her scarf and places it around
my neck. Tonight her mother will ask what happened to her new scarf. She’ll tell
her mother that she gave it to me to keep me warm at night. “That was a very kind
thing to do,” her mother will say, “but it’s getting warmer now, so tomorrow why
don’t you just take it back and save it for him for next year.” Tomorrow when the
girl returns, I’ll be gone.
The girl will pick up her scarf, place it around her neck, save it for me
until each winter when I return.
*
*
*
*
Another winter has now come. I’m not sure how many it’s been this time;
another winter hiker has willed me into existence, first in his mind, then with his
hands. I don’t feel much different than last year or the year before or any of the
years before. I look out over the lake and see a single sailboat, its red spinnaker
reminding me of something, but I can’t think of what. Slowly I begin to
remember. I know I was many times before created by a winter hiker, then there
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was a little girl and she thought I was cold so she took off her scarf and put it
around my neck. I remember. I’d thought it was a dream, but now I remember it.
I see a woman in her 20s. She was the little girl who’d put the scarf
around my neck each winter. She walks toward me holding the hand of her own
little girl, and they stop a few feet in front of me. The woman bends down to the
girl and speaks to her. “I come to this hill every winter, and now I’d like you to
meet my special friend who returns each year to visit me.”
Her daughter looks up at me, spends a long moment studying my features.
“He needs something, mom,” says the girl, as she removes her well-worn
red scarf and places it around my neck. “There. That’s better,” she says. “That’s
the way he was meant to be.”
The girl adds a little snow.
“Will he come again next year?” she asks.
“Do you want him to?”
“It wouldn’t be real winter without him.”
“Then he’ll come.”
*
*
*
*
A man and woman sat before a watercolor in the special exhibits area of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Its colors were subdued and
dreamlike. The brush strokes seemed as though made by feathers of a bird. The
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room was quiet. The woman had waited a very long time to bring the man to this
room to show him this painting.
“I’m not sure what I’m seeing,” said the man. “It looks like lovely
patterns, clouds maybe or snow.”
“Clear your mind. Don’t concentrate. Let your eyes relax. No rush.”
Several minutes passed.
“What do you see now?” said the woman.
“It looks like a little girl in a red scarf looking up at a snowman.” The
man paused. “How did that happen,” he said. “How in the world did that
suddenly happen?”
“Anything else?” said the woman.
“Now a small snow dog is standing next to them. They’re on a hill
overlooking a blue lake. It’s the deepest blue I’ve ever seen. Funny I didn’t see a
lake there before. There are billowing clouds and sailboats with yellow and green
spinnakers. None of this was there a moment ago.”
“Do you know what you’re seeing?” asked the woman.
“Yes, what I told you.”
“No. I mean what you’re really seeing” she said. The man continued to
let himself breathe in the painting.
“Tell me.”
“You’re seeing my dreams,” said the woman. “When I was a little girl,
my mother brought me to a hill to meet her special friend, a snowman, and
sometimes a little snow dog. Every year he visited my mother when she herself
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was a little girl. Each year she’d give him her red scarf, then when he’d leave,
she’d save it for him till he returned the following year. One winter’s day, she
introduced me to him, and I continued the tradition with her scarf. I used to
dream of the snowman and the snowdog. I still do. They’re a part of me. I
became a painter. One day I painted the watercolor I’ve brought you here to see. I
love you deeply. I wanted you to share my dreams.”
The man took the woman’s hands and held them firmly in his own.
The woman continued, “Not everyone who sees a painting experiences
what was deep within the heart of the painter, what was in their soul. A painting
has a spirit. I wanted you to experience what I felt when I dreamed this painting.
Most viewers will see this watercolor as patterns or clouds.
But you see it as I did—you see the dreams of a little girl in a red scarf.
And that is the name of this watercolor.”
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